History, Security

She’s a Witch!

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The BBC has posted a sad story of a woman in Switzerland tried and convicted of being a witch. Apparently 1782 was a year during Europe’s “Age of Englightenment”, but the circumstances of Anna Goeldi’s death suggest that torture and capital punishment were tools of the elite to cover up their own indiscretions:

But today Walter Hauser, a local journalist, does not believe Anna died because isolated Glarus remained mired in medieval superstition.

Researching the original records of the case, he found something far more banal.

“Jakob Tschudi had an affair with Anna Goeldi,” he explains.

“When she was sacked, she threatened to reveal that. Adultery was a crime then. He stood to lose everything if he was found out.”

But at that time in Glarus, witchcraft was a crime.

Mr Hauser calls Anna’s trial and execution “judicial murder”.

“Educated people here did not believe in witchcraft in 1782,” he insists.

“Anna Goeldi was a threat to powerful people. They wanted her out of the way, accusing her of being a witch. It was a legal way to kill her.”

Tragic, but the most interesting part of the story is how people today are reportedly unable to take responsibility:

At the local high school, many students are uncomfortable about reviving this old story.

“I agree it was shocking, but that was Glarus then,” says one girl.

“It happened a long time ago,” says another.

“I don’t think people today should be held responsible for the past.”

It is a familiar argument. Switzerland used it for years as justification for not apologising for the way it turned away Jewish refugees during World War II.

Imagine if we managed security by saying people today should not be held responsible for the past. What constitutes the past and what level of injustice is dismissable? Weeks, months, years, decades…and who decides? I can not see why the students do not take the easy opportunity to make a positive decision on this and seek justice. What risk, what possible loss/burden, is there to them?

Security

Data Protection Principles

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Working in England has brought the DPA (Data Protection Act) set of protection principles into focus for me. The Isle of Man Government has a nice tidy introduction site:

Personal data must be
1. Used fairly and lawfully
2. Used for specific and lawful purposes, in a manner that is compatible with those purposes
3. Adequate, relevant and not excessive
4. Accurate and where necessary kept up to date
5. Kept for no longer than necessary
6. Used in accordance with the rights of individuals under the Act
7. Kept secure to avoid unauthorised or unlawful use, accidental loss, or damage

At first glance 1 and 2 seem to overlap, and 2 and 3 seem to overlap…wonder how they came to just seven.

Energy, History, Security

Chernobyl Lessons

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Interesting review by the BBC of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Reactions went awry, apparently, when some engineers tried to test a hypothesis on a production system. The system quickly heated out of control during the test, and was unable to recover.

Operational errors:

The reactor began to overheat and its water coolant started to turn to steam.

At this point it is thought that all but six control rods had been removed from the reactor core – the minimum safe operating number was considered to be 30.

Design errors:

Because the reactor was not housed in a reinforced concrete shell, as is standard practice in most countries, the building sustained severe damage and large amounts of radioactive debris escaped into the atmosphere.

They are still working on building a containment system, twenty years later, and now need £600m to replace the present system that is failing. Wonder what the cost of the containment shell, and/or a proper development and test environment, would have been prior to the accident.

Security

Internet expression and jail time in Vietnam, Tunisia, Syria

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A man in Vietnam was recently released from prison. His case is interesting because he was charged under security laws after he posted on the Internet thoughts about democracy. Amnesty International has the latest news:

Nguyen Vu Binh was arrested in September 2002, charged under national security legislation and convicted for ‘spying’, article 80 of the Penal Code, for having written and posted articles about democracy on the Internet and being in email contact with political groups in exile.

In addition to the seven years’ imprisonment, Nguyen Vu Binh was also sentenced to a three-year probation period following his release from prison. It remains unclear whether he is currently under such probation or whether he is a free man. Amnesty International is calling for no such restrictions to be imposed on him.

Apparently he was released after numerous protests including hunger-strikes and requesting clemency directly from the country’s leader. Amnesty International is still calling for freedom of dissent under the Vietnam government:

A report by Amnesty International in October 2006 revealed a climate of fear in Vietnam, with people afraid to post information online and Internet café owners forced to inform on their customers. It described individuals being harassed, detained and imprisoned for expressing their peaceful political views online, with fear of prosecution fuelling widespread self-censorship.

[…]

The rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association are guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The covenant is binding on Viet Nam, which is a state party since 1982. Yet peaceful government critics have been charged with criminal offences in the penal code’s Chapter XI, which relates to national security.

In similar cases, a Tunisian man was released after serving time in jail, while a group of Syrian students were allegedly tortured and locked away.

Freedom of expression on the Internet is complex not only due to the laws of the country a person lives in but also due to the laws of the countries overseas that have Internet access, or due to the laws of extra-national groups (e.g. religion). The BBC reports today that a Swedish cartoonist has been forced into hiding by threats from Muslim fundamentalists.

A little closer to home, Project Censored, gives a list of “Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008”

#1 No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”
#2 Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
#3 AFRICOM: US Military Control of Africa’s Resources
#4 Frenzy of Increasingly Destructive Trade Agreements
#5 Human Traffic Builds US Embassy in Iraq
#6 Operation FALCON Raids
#7 Behind Blackwater Inc.
…

For a unique perspective on this issue, I wonder how many will see parallels to the news about parents’ managing their children, including Internet access?

“I’m not saying all the books out there are bad, we’ve just got to restore parents’ confidence in their own ability rather than tell them what to do.”

She argues her approach is about getting people to really think about the kind of parent they are and the kind of parent they want to be, but mostly it’s about getting them to understand their child.

[…]

“I don’t know what a perfect parent is or what a perfect child is but I suspect both would be extremely dull,” she says. “Life is about challenge and emotion, it’s about the reality of living.”

The last part deserves a post of its own, but on the whole these issues show the amazing future challenges for information security systems to both protect sources from harm as well as filter out harmful ideas while still allowing challenging (or challenged?) ideas to flow in a public forum.